LONG BLOG

So, lots of things are happening in the world of video game movies, we’ve had Prince of Persia, Tekken, Max Payne, Doom and, Street Fighter: The (horrible) Legend Of Chun Li, and there are talks of big screen renditions of Mass Effect, Mortal Kombat, and hell, Jamie Foxx is Lynch in the Kane & Lynch film. This got me thinking about what games could lend themselves to be really good movies, and how we could put these titles in the right hands and treat them so that they would become good movies.

After thinking about possible changes to the plot that would have to be made to make them more movie palatable, special effects, and whether or not it should be a live action movie, I came to road block: who the hell would play some of these characters? I decided to see if I could find the perfect (or not so perfect) IRL matches for some of our most beloved (or not) characters. Thus began “In-Movie-Life”, or IML the poorly thought out, paragraph long reasons for why which real life actor should play whoever fictionalized video game character. It's going to be fun.

And I think I’ll start with the jolly old folks in Bad Company.

Let’s kick it off with Private Preston Marlowe, and his IML counterpart, Jake Gyllenhaal. Seriously, if you didn’t see Jake every time you saw Marlowe, didn’t hear Jake every time Marlowe spoke, you must have not played Bad Company or Bad Company 2. I don’t even really need to explain why Gyllenhaal is the perfect match for Marlowe, they look alike, talk alike, and hell, if you saw Jarhead, they even act and (attempt to) snipe enemies alike. There's pretty much no one better suited to play the role of Marlowe than Jake, and if you can find someone, I’d like to slap you in the face for lying to me, and all the good people who may or may not read this blog.

No second choices because Jake wins. End of story. Don't argue with my authority.

This brings us to our next man, Private Terrence Sweetwater. Sweets wasn’t as easy as Marlowe, but I plowed though army movies and photos of actors to make sure I got a good match. And then I remembered good ol’ Colin Farrell. Save for the chin, they look alike, and he’s done some “shooty shooty bang bang” films (S.W.A.T.), but the catchy thing here is he looks smart, and that’s really all you need him to do. Sweetwater is the nerd of the group, and with proper script writing and acting from Colin, you can turn Mr. Farrell into one of us…uh, the group of us who pride themselves in military tech, at least.

Second choices include Colin Hanks, James McAvoy, David Schwimmer, and Matthew Leitch. And yes, I did just look at the Band of Brothers cast list and pick names. Truthfully, any one of these actors can portray Sweetwater well given the right treatment to writing Sweets’ lines, but Farrell gets first dibs because he’s Irish, and they don’t get any praise from me.

Now for Private George Haggard Jr. Ah, Haggard, I knew what I needed as soon as I saw him in Bad Company. I needed a Texan, but not just any Texan; I needed an actor that exemplified what it meant to truly be Texan. That meant I couldn’t use Martial Arts Master and God Slayer Chuck “Walker Texas Ranger” Norris, which made my quest of the perfect match for the badass-ness that is the Dallas Cowboys loving demolitions expert much harder. Then, I saw Zombieland. When I saw Woody Harrelson acting all badass, killing zombies and what not, I thought to myself, “Give that man a 870MCS Shotgun, some C4, a darker beard and a beanie, and you’ve got the man who single handedly invaded a neutral country”.

Other suggestions include Stone Cold Steve Austin, because he’s Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Chuck Norris, because I fear the day I take Chuck Norris out of a competition for anything. I need to look up more Texan like actors.

And last, but not least, is Sergeant Samuel D. Redford, also known as “I’m Never Getting My Retirement”. You don’t know how badly I wanted to cast Samuel L Jackson for the role. I really wanted to; like, really wanted to. But I couldn’t, because I knew that in the end, they just don’t act alike enough to justify the casting. So I went searching, and after looking at the cast listing for a lot of films featuring prominent black actors, I settled on Forest Whitaker. He’s definitely got the build of Redford, if I do say so myself, and I think he could get the strict, no-nonsense Sergeant feel that balances out the rest of the group. Plus, I loved Ghost Dog, so yeah, bias.

Other suggestions include the always ready and willing Denzel Washington, because Denzel needs to do some funny movies, Jaime Foxx, because he’s better at playing black people than playing white people and singing...sometimes, and Dennis Haysbert. Just watch his work in CBS series The Unit.

And there it is. That’s the starting cast of the upcoming (not really) Bad Company motion picture. It’s sure to be a blockbuster hit with this acting talent, right? I mean, you can use Michael Chiklis for the obligatory Russian Bad Guy, and I think Brent Spiner (The Excited Scientist from Independence Day) would make a good Flynn if they decided to add him in. And who knows, they might be able to get Stephen Lang to be the “IM GUNNA YELL AT YOU TO MAKE YOU AFRAID OF ME” colonel/commander or something.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm just doing this so I can sleep at night. Better I get them out know so I'll just be disappointed when my picks don't actually make it, then have to scramble around IMBD and Wikipedia and Google Images looking for actors that can't even be considered then.